


What Happened to Olympia Shaw?

by nickel710



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Atlas News, Gen, Investigative Journalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 07:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickel710/pseuds/nickel710
Summary: Remember Olympia Shaw of Atlas News, the reporter that wrote the articles on the attempted museum heist, the return of underground Overwatch operations, and Jack Morrison possibly being Soldier:76? This is her story.A mysterious patron who wants the truth exposed. A best friend with a penchant for snooping. A journalist fed up with being silenced.The trail went cold in Dorado, Mexico....





	1. Prologue: 4 August 2078

**Author's Note:**

> Oops sorry I started another one, digging deep for inspiration on the others wasn't helping but this idea has been kicking around for a while.
> 
> Eventually this will include R76 shipping (shocking for readers who've read anything else I've ever written, I know!). Possibly it will also include a ship with Olympia and one of the Overwatch character ensemble. But the rating will not change, this is not going to be smut.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

# PROLOGUE: 4 August 2078

Olympia Shaw sat at her desk at the Atlas News building in New York, New York, drumming her fingers. A little less than a month ago, changes had started in Atlas that had raised her hackles, so like any good investigative journalist, she took notice of the feeling of unease and started taking notes.

Now, she had almost a month’s worth of observations about the changes taking place at Atlas, and things seemed worse than she had originally thought. The first days of her notes were riddled with self-deprecating comments about the likelihood that she was overstating the severity of the things she was noticing, doubts about how objective she was being. But when she looked at the facts, compared those first few days of notes to the notes she had just finished writing up for the 3rd of August, she knew she was right.

Her computer dinged; an email on her private account.

> Dear Olympia,
> 
> Have you reconsidered my offer? Time runs short.

She sighed. Which scared her more, her anonymous would-be patron, or her growing desire to say yes to their creepy offer?

“What’s that?” a voice inquired over her shoulder.

With a yelp, Olympia snapped her laptop shut and spun in her chair to face the culprit, a young man named Luis Olivera. Luis was a computer technician for Atlas, her best friend at the company; about eight months ago they had become roommates, too, when they had both found themselves in need of a new living arrangement after Olympia had broken up with her long-time partner and Luis’s lease was up.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, not ready to share with anyone that an unknown entity was trying to pay her to do investigative work independent of Atlas. Especially not while she was _at_ Atlas headquarters. “Don’t sneak up on me!”

Luis just smirked. “Whatever you say, Oly. Next time I’ll just leave you here when you forget to check the clock and fail to notice it’s time to go home.”

Olympia grabbed her phone and clicked on the screen—sure enough, it was 5:07. She sighed and rubbed at her face. “Damn,” she grumbled. “Thanks, Lu. Let’s get out of here.”

She packed up her backpack while Luis began his usual lecture about taking better care of herself. Her mind drifted to the offer of money as Luis began explaining, again, the importance of eating regular meals. She knew that it wasn’t safe to accept such an offer when she didn’t know who was offering, but Atlas’s increasingly suspicious withdrawal from any _real_ reporting had her itching to cut ties and do some real investigation.

“Are you even listening, Oly?”

“Hm? I always listen. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I shouldn’t only have black coffee,” she recited, shouldering her backpack and focusing on Luis. His frown only deepened as she shot him her best Reporter Smile and gestured for him to lead the way.

He sighed, his usual holier-than-thou attitude dissipating as his shoulders slumped. “What’s going on, for real? Something is up, Oly. I know you know, and I know you’re trying to figure it out. You only get like this when you’re on the scent.”

She shook her head, glancing around to make sure nobody else had heard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said pointedly, eyebrows raised. He seemed to take the hint and yielded, hands raised in a “you win” gesture, and turned to head to the stairs.

Olympia clicked off her lamp and followed him out. It would be the last time she clicked off that lamp, or sat at that desk, or turned her back on Atlas News.


	2. 5 August 2078 (1)

# 5 August 2078

Olympia awoke with a startled gasp from unsettling dreams, clutching at her thin summer blanket with one perfectly manicured hand for a moment as she stared wide-eyed around her small room, waiting for the disorientation to pass.

Then she twisted the knob on her bedside lamp, flooding the room with light, and pulled out her dream journal.

> _8-5-78, 4:42 AM_
> 
> _Dreamt again of the vigilante Soldier:76. A fight, his role in it unknown. Location was Atlas? Or at least it changed to Atlas after the fight, 76 was still there. We were working together, running from an encroaching threat. He turned into Luis. The building collapsed. Luis died. My fate unknown because I woke up._

It was strange how frequently Soldier:76 featured in her dreams. Ever since writing her now infamous report on the vigilante and the rumors that he was in fact Jack Morrison, she had been dreaming of the masked man. Last spotted in Dorado, fighting members of the Los Muertos gang. What was he doing? Why was he doing it? She had to know.

She had to know.

Atlas was stifling her every move, giving her bullshit assignments to sap away her time and energy into reporting nonsense that didn’t actually contribute anything to the pursuit for the truth about Overwatch, the UN, or the growing political corruption across the globe. It was all connected, she knew it was, and she wasn’t the only one.

She padded to the living room, pulled out her computer from her backpack, and booted it up.

Time was running short, her anonymous, would-be patron had said.

She clicked reply to the email.

She wrote her response. She sent it. She waited. She fell asleep.

* * *

_ding_

Olympia snapped awake at the sound of an incoming email. Heart beating fast, she scrambled to grab the laptop from where she had set it on the coffee table hours earlier after sending her reply.

The email waiting for her was a huge letdown, a string of symbols that seemed to her no more than spam. Was the whole thing a hoax, some cruel imposter sending her promises of money and investigative independence? Only to dash her hopes with wingdings.

“Since when do you communicate in encrypted language?” Luis’s voice asked only inches from her ear, causing her to yelp and jump in surprise. The back of her head connected with his nose, and he staggered back from where he had been stooping over the back of the couch to snoop on her email, clutching his face and swearing loudly.

“Serves you right, you sneak!” Olympia snapped, on her feet now and facing her roommate with hands on hips. “How many times, Lu!”

“It’s not my fault you won’t tell me anything about your life anymore! How else am I supposed to know what’s going on with you?”

“Maybe you should mind your own business!” she countered angrily.

“Maybe you should go to hell,” he answered, arms crossed. “We were a team, Oly, and now you’re hiding everything from me! What happened?”

She blinked, fighting down an instinctively nasty response, and considered. True, Luis had a penchant for snooping and nosing about in business that wasn’t his. But she supposed he had a point, too—eight months ago, when they moved in together, they had felt on top of the world. Olympia had broken into Atlas’s on-screen reporting about the ongoing Second Omnic Crisis, and had been entrusted with the most sensitive investigations about the end of Overwatch and its apparent ongoing underground operations. Luis had been her sounding board for her articles and reports, had helped her craft everything into masterful prose. He had also maybe been willing to help her find some backdoors into sensitive and classified databases. They had pursued the truth together, and now she was shutting him out.

She sighed. “I’m sorry,” she offered, rubbing at her face tiredly. “I got up my own ass about it all.” She dropped her hands and glared at him. “But that doesn’t mean you should read my emails without permission!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Honey, I don’t think you can even read that email,” he pointed out, gesturing at the screen with the string of symbols and code. She gave him a flat stare until he threw his hands up. “Fine, you’re right. I’m sorry, too. I won’t read your emails without you knowing. Or your texts.”

She gaped. “My texts?!”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“Luis!”

He grinned sheepishly. “It was only once, and because I thought you were texting Jordan again and didn’t tell me.”

“Well, I wasn’t texting Jordan! And you are a total ass. Stay out of my phone.”

Luis winced, now looking truly remorseful. “I swear it was just the once and as soon as I knew it wasn’t your skeevy ex, I stopped looking. I’m really sorry, Oly.”

She rolled her eyes. “Promise it won’t happen again?”

“Promise. Now tell me what’s going on, I’m dying to know.”

With a little laugh, she gestured him over. “Alright you nosy jerk, c’mon.”

“Yes!” he cheered, coming around the couch and scooping her up in a hug. “Investigative pair extraordinaire Luimpia, back in business!”

“Luimpia? Did you make us a ship name?”

“Maybe. Enough stalling, tell me.”

So she explained about the emails that had started coming in after she had published her piece on Jack Morrison. At the time, they had seemed just one small drop in a bucket of both public and private backlash. The article had been the beginning of the end; it had garnered a great deal of attention from both camps: those who thought Jack Morrison was a hero who had died in the explosion and therefore thought she was defaming him, and those who thought him a villain who had masterminded the whole thing and therefore found her article too forgiving.

Things had spiraled out of control quickly after that. Her editor “quit,” which had spurred a great deal of editorial turnover at Atlas, and had also begun Olympia’s fall from favor at the organization. Her reporting tasks became increasingly inane, while also keeping her busier and busier. Journalists she respected were fired, demoted, and reassigned to less powerful news, while yes-man idiots were given coverage of the ongoing political and military messes across the country and world.

One of her “colleagues” published a piece insisting that Overwatch was a criminal organization now, complete with language that Olympia believed purposefully incited rage against former Overwatch agents (“many of whom,” she reminded Luis, who patiently sat through the rant despite having heard it many times before, “had nothing to do with any of the nonsense at the end of Overwatch and now have to live in shame for nothing”). The next day, she had another email from the same person who had anonymously reached out to her right after her own piece had been published.

The anonymous person—

“They need a name,” Luis interrupted her.

“What?”

“They need a name! We can’t just keep calling them ‘the anonymous person’ or whatever. It’s all dramatic and whatever the first time, but it’s just tedious now.”

Olympia rolled her eyes. “It’s not a movie script, Lu.”

“Exactly,” he insisted. “No need for the dramatic flair. Let’s call them… Multo.”

“Multo?” she repeated, confused.

“Means ‘specter’ or ‘ghost’ in Filipino,” he supplied.

She snorted. “I thought we didn’t want the dramatic flair.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

She shrugged. “Fine, Multo it is.”

Multo emailed her again immediately after the publication of the anti-Overwatch piece, telling her the offer still stood. Money for her travel and publication needs if she would investigate the possible death of Jack Morrison and the whereabouts of Soldier:76. Report the truth about Morrison and the fall of Overwatch.

“Too good to be true?” Luis prompted.

She shrugged. “Too creepy to be seriously considered, or so I thought.”

But things at Atlas got worse. Outright lies were reported about ex-Overwatch agents, people who lived and worked in New York and across the US. Scientists whose names were forever besmirched, who now received death threats and hate mail. Olympia had secretly reached out to many of these people, on her own time and at risk of her job, to find many of them had been ostracized from their own communities and professional circles due to the rumors started by Atlas.

When a fellow reporter challenged the editors about the lies, she had been immediately terminated.

Olympia had laid low, taking her notes on the changes to Atlas, waiting for the right moment to go to the executives and present her case.

But the moment didn’t come. The executives she would have approached resigned. One, a known workaholic, was on a “surprise vacation” and had been gone for a full week now, far longer than she had ever left in the past.

Then the email yesterday, her early morning reply, and Luis was caught up.

“And now it turns out to all be a hoax,” she finished with a sigh, gesturing at the jumbled mess of a reply on her screen.

“No,” Luis said, reaching for the computer, then pausing and looking to her for permission. She nodded, and he took up the laptop and starting messing with it. “You’re just not familiar with this kind of encryption.”

As usual, he launched into a complicated and long-winded account of what he was doing as he clicked and typed away, but Olympia didn’t really listen or care about the details. That’s why she had Luis, to know this stuff. Well, that and because he was a good friend, despite his occasional invasion of privacy.

A minute or two later, and he was handing her the laptop with a triumphant smile.

> Dear Olympia,
> 
> This is good news, though at the eleventh hour. Now that we are working together, you will have to move fast. I hope you are fully committed.
> 
> What you have agreed to, as I told you some time ago, is a risky endeavor. All further communication between us should be properly secured through anonymous and encrypted accounts. Passwords must be given in each exchange for access to the next one. Your hacker friend, whom I assume will be accompanying you, will know how to handle this.

Here they paused as they read, giving each other nervous glances.

“How does Multo know about me?” Luis asked.

Olympia shook her head and silently prayed she had made the right decision. Had she just gotten Luis in deep water?

> I have wired money to your bank account. You are free to do with it as you wish, though I have given it to you in good faith that you will use it to support yourself and the pursuit of the truth about Jack Morrison.
> 
> Beware, however, that there are many forces at play that do not wish the truth to be uncovered or revealed to the public. People will work against you if they discover what you are doing. I have done all I can to ensure that the money transfer has been anonymous and untraceable, but my identity is not easy to hide from those who are already watching me. I cannot guarantee that you are not already in danger. Leave as soon as you can. Do not return to your flat in New York.
> 
> Good luck, Olympia. And Luis, should he choose to join you. Be in touch as you discover more; I will help as much as I can.

Had Olympia not already been tracking the insidious changes within Atlas News that had been weeding out anyone actually trying to report the news, she might have thought the email too overdramatic to be sincere. But instead, she felt a looming sense of danger, imminent and deadly.

She met Luis’s eyes for a long second, then pulled up her bank account information.

“Holy shit,” Luis breathed. “Oly, what the hell.”

“We need a lot of this in cash,” she said, head spinning at her sudden millionaire status. “We’re going to be bribing a lot of people in the near future, I think.”

“We?” Luis said doubtfully.

She was pulled violently from her daze. “Oh,” she said quietly. “I thought… you’d want to come.”

He grinned. “You want me to come?”

“Well of course I do,” she said, confused. “Why wouldn’t I?”

He pumped his fist. “Hell yeah! Luimpia, on a mission to save the world!”

“Save the—Luis, we’re not saving the world. We’re just investigating an old washed up war hero.”

“When do we leave?”

She rolled her eyes. “We should contact the bank, see how long it will take to get a large cash withdrawal. Find someone to look after the flat while we travel. I guess we’ll have to resign from Atlas, two weeks notice means we’re looking at leaving mid-August, and we’ll need—”

She cut off with a screech as someone pounded loudly on their front door.

“Police! Olympia Shaw, Luis Olivera, open the door! This is the police!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please consider leaving comments/kudos if you've enjoyed so far! It's life-giving for content creators and helps so much.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you hope might happen in this fic, and which Overwatch character(s) you'd most like to see make an appearance!
> 
> Thanks for reading <3
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @nickel710 but I don't post much.


	3. 5 August 2078 (2)

# 5 August, 2078

Olympia sprang into action at the second knock.

Years of journalism experience had taught her a lot about what to expect from the police showing up at your door. She did not know for sure if they had a warrant, but suspected they did based on the way they had identified themselves. And if they had a warrant, there were certain things they would be after. Things like... she stuffed the laptop into her backpack, found her phone and gave it to Luis.

“Give me your phone,” she hissed.

“What?” he said, eyes wide with fear. She put her finger over her lips and gestured hurriedly until he fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her.

She shoved the backpack into his arms and hauled him toward the back of the apartment. The police knocked again. “One second,” she yelled to the door. “I’m not dressed!”

She counted her blessings that Luis, who slept naked and compulsively picked out his outfits every night, was fully dressed like he was by 8 AM every morning. Including shoes. This was one of his quirks that she had never understood, wearing shoes all the time, but right now it was exactly what they needed.

“Go,” she said. “Quick! I’ll see you at Dolores’s at seven, okay? Go!” He tried to ask questions, but the knocks were growing more impatient so she shoved him again before snatching a light summer robe to throw over her pajamas and rushing to the door. She glanced back and saw nothing but the open window, a blessedly normal sight in August, before cracking the door open.

“Olympia Shaw?” the officer on the other side asked.

“Yes? What’s this about?”

The officer held up a folded paper and said, “We have a warrant to search the premises,” he said, reaching forward to push the door open, but Olympia stopped it bodily.

“I’d like to read the warrant and see your badges,” she said.

After the usual threats about the importance of cooperating and questions about what she had to hide, which Olympia patiently waited out by simply repeating her request to see the warrant and the badges, the two officers finally acquiesced. She read the warrant while using Luis’s phone to dial the police precinct, inwardly pleased that she had been right about its contents. She inquired about the badge numbers with the precinct supervisor to make sure that the officers were, in fact, officers, and then about the warrant to make sure it had been properly issued, before she finally hung up and opened the door.

The officers came inside, one of them immediately beginning a search while the other, the one who had first presented her with the warrant, stopped to talk to her.

“Miss Shaw, as you already know, we have permission to confiscate your personal computer and your phone in order to look for evidence of communication with a known terrorist.”

Her stomach dropped. A terrorist? Jesus Christ, what had she gotten herself into?

“What? My computer and my phone aren’t here,” she said, letting her shock and fear creep into her voice. “What’s this about terrorism? I’ve never communicated with a terrorist!”

“Not everyone is who they seem, Miss Shaw,” the officer replied smoothly, then frowned. “What do you mean your computer and phone aren’t here? Where are they? And whose phone is that?” he asked, nodding to the one in her hand

“Luis’s. He has mine, and the computer,” she answered honestly.

“Where is Mr. Olivera? Why does he have your things?”

“I don’t know where he is,” she answered, honest again. She silently added a prayer that he had made it somewhere safe without getting caught. Having the police seize her computer and phone would have been bad, but Luis running from the cops with the items they were seeking on hand would be far worse. “We traded phones for a while because my crazy ex kept texting me, but can’t reach me on Luis’s phone.”

That was true, too. Except it had happened seven months ago and they had traded back when Jordan had given up a few weeks later.

The officer looked annoyed, asked if she would let him look through the phone she was currently using. She declined, politely explaining that it was not her right to grant such permission since the phone was not her property. She could practically see him debating whether he could confiscate Luis’s phone from her legally before he sighed and gave up. “And your computer?” he asked.

“Luis helps me out on projects, sometimes,” she told the officer. “Sometimes he takes my computer to his favorite places to work when he knows I’m not going to need it, so he can edit videos or do some website upkeep for me.” All true.

The officer grumbled about this, unhappy with this turn of events. The warrant specifically gave them permission to search the premises for evidence of correspondence with the terrorist, and to seize the computer and cell phone of Olympia Shaw. It did not give them permission to look through Luis’s phone or computer. So they shuffled through the mail sitting on the kitchen counter, checked her filing cabinet and desk, searched her closet and the main room for any signs of hidden paperwork, and found nothing.

“I want to know what this is about,” Olympia demanded again as they finished their search, arms crossed. It wasn’t hard to act outraged; she had just had strange men rummage through her underwear.

“You can have your lawyer get in touch with our supervisor,” the officer responded. “In the meantime, don’t go anywhere. You’re a person of interest in an ongoing terrorism investigation.”

“Isn’t terrorism a federal issue? Shouldn’t the FBI be here if this is a terrorism investigation?” She bit back a smirk at the sour look on the officer’s face. She recognized the expression—it was the look of a cop who didn’t usually have to deal with journalists, or anyone who knew their way around the investigative process.

“I’m sure my supervisor will explain it all to your lawyer in an satisfactory manner,” the officer snapped. “Let’s go, Holt.”

Once they’d left, Olympia collapsed onto the couch, shaking. Holy shit. A terrorism investigation? And the warrant had checked out, which meant a judge somewhere agreed that Olympia was suspect enough to issue the permission to search her computer.

She’d have to move quickly, Multo had written. They hadn’t been kidding. Shit.

“Money first, Olympia,” she told herself, forcing herself to move. How did she get the money from her bank account without the police being able to track it? She pondered the question while stuffing a duffel with first her own clothes and basics, then Luis’s. She folded up a second duffel and shoved it down the side of hers, then added Luis’s athletic shoes to the top. Hopefully it was enough, because Multo had told her not to come back to the flat, and she didn’t want Luis’s feet to hurt wearing his stupid fashionable shoes.

It was weird, the things that came to mind in the middle of this chaos.

Dressed, with the duffel slung over a shoulder, she locked up the apartment and ran downstairs. Now the question was, were they watching the exits for her? Leaving with a duffel would certainly be suspicious. Damn, this was already more than she had bargained for. For a second, she considered just turning herself in, taking all the blame so Luis could go free.

“No,” she whispered, steeling her nerves. She didn’t trust Multo, but she trusted her instincts and they were screaming at her that something was up. If she could get to the money Multo had given her, she had a chance to do the right thing and expose the truth. It was why she had decided to become a journalist, years ago. And besides, she hadn’t been talking out of her ass when she had written that her generation still believed in hope. She did. Maybe she couldn’t save her favela from Vishkar or pilot a mech on the Korean front, but she could do this. She could do _something_ , and she would.

Thinking fast, she jogged back up to the second floor and pounded on the door of 2C.

“Who is it?” called the inhabitant.

“Olympia. I need a favor!” she yelled back, then the door clicked open and she smiled pleasantly at Mrs. Suloa, a retired neighbor that she had gotten to know some months ago.

“Olympia, dear, it’s good to see you. Come in, come in.”

“I can’t stay, Mrs. Suloa,” Olympia said regretfully. “I’m late for a meeting, but I realized I double booked an appointment with the time I’m supposed to be traveling to the train station tonight.” She hefted her duffel. “I’m so sorry to ask, but is there any way you can meet me with this at Dolores’s at seven tonight? So I can take it with me without having to come back here?”

“Well, of course, dear, I’d be happy to. I don't get out enough these days, it will be a nice walk for me in the evening. Where are you traveling to this time?”

“Mexico.”

* * *

Olympia had no idea what to do about the money.

She consulted with Google and determined that there was no way to quickly move that much money without the help of a banker willing to do her favors. (This raised questions she could not ask about how it was possible for Multo to have done so earlier that morning, but she put those aside into the mental box labeled ‘things to worry about if I survive this mess without going to jail.’ It was a brand new box as of the morning.)

The odds at this point were good that the cops would freeze her assets before she had a chance to move the money. She could set up an offshore bank account (Google had answers) and fund it using the money in her account, but it would take at least a day or two for the process to go through. Still, it was worth trying, so she settled in at a cafe and Luis’s phone, and started the process of opening an account.

She should have been shocked at how easy it was, but really, systems made for the rich were all about convenience. In 2078, if she couldn’t use her roommate’s phone on cafe wifi to open an offshore, low tax, highly private bank account to house her millions of dollars provided by an apparent terrorist, then what was the point?

A banker contacted her via text. She responded in French, which she had learned from spending half of her childhood in Quebec after her parents had divorced. Things were underway.

But it all seemed so obvious. If she were a cop, she would be in the process of getting a warrant to read access phone records for herself and Luis. Sure, French might slow them down, but only so long as it took to throw the texts into Google translate or call in the police department’s translator.

“New phones,” she muttered to herself, wishing she had thought of that _before_ setting up her bank account using Luis’s phone. He was going to be pissed.

After she left the cafe, she remembered just in time to withdraw as much cash as possible and use that money to buy the prepaid phones, since her card would surely be tracked. One big fail at being on the run—setting up the account from Luis’s phone—and one small win. She sighed. It was something, at least.

* * *

At 7:00, she found herself waiting anxiously in the back booth of her favorite diner, Dolores’s. Mrs. Suloa showed up at 7:02 and dropped off the duffel. Luis gave her a heart attack, showing up at 7:12, earning himself a solid scolding for making her worry, before she caught him up on what she had done that day.

Luis looked pale and frightened, and she didn’t blame him.

“Last chance to back out, Lu,” she said, compassion thickening her voice. “I get it. You can tell them I stole your phone and that you have no idea what I’m up to.”

“No,” he said quickly, brows furrowing. “No way. I told you yesterday, and I meant it. Something’s up. I know. You know.” He nodded firmly. “Now the rest of the world has to know.”

Gratitude flooded her, and she reached across the booth to grip his hand in hers briefly before pulling out her computer and handing it to him. “So, tell me you can do something to speed up this money transfer.”


End file.
